.
His name was Somebody
.
.
.
.
But it was a tragedy that this should be so because he finished with the worst Western he had ever made, My Name is Nobody. It was by a long shot worse even than There Was a Crooked Man.
.
.
Much of the time this tiresome film is puerile. The rest of the time it is infantile.
.
.
The main star with Fonda of this Italian-French-German co-production is a Venetian named Mario Girotti (who took the name Terence Hill). Poor Fonda does occasionally in this movie look bewildered, as if wondering what on earth he is doing there. Hill was enormously popular in Italy and perhaps his kind of humor goes down well there. There is a lot of slapstick and speeded-up film. He makes faces. He is a buffoon, in fact, which is, of course an ancient Italian tradition but entirely unsuited for a Western ‘hero’.
.
.
There is naturally the old ‘nobody’ joke – which is at least as old as Odysseus – as in “Nobody was faster on the draw”. If you want to see that joke used well, watch Dead Man. Here, it is, like everything else, done to death.
.
.
There is lavatorial ‘humor’ and a silly (and far too long) scene in a house of mirrors, a cheap reworking of the moment in The Lady from Shanghai.
.
.
There are really only two good things about this film: some of the photography is quite good, for example a bit where the riders gallop through the White Sands in New Mexico; and, of course, Fonda, who, despite the awful lines he has to deliver, shines through in his old age as the famous gunfighter at the end of his career. If it hadn’t been for these two points, the film would be completely unwatchable.
.
6 Responses
So Jeff, I’m not exactly clear, do you like Leone, Morricone and spaghetti Westerns or not?
I agree, I have been a bit ambiguous on the subject.
I have at tried to find some saving graces of the sub-genre, such as that such pictures filled theaters once more with people watching cowboys.
And all the other plus-points spaghetti westerns had, such as, er…
Fair enough. Although I do like Sergio, I’m not a big fan of “Nobody.” Technically Leone was only a producer here though some think he was more of a co-director. Fonda actually did make a cameo appearance as a grizzled prospector in son Peter’s “Wanda Nevada” in 1979. So if you don’t like the idea of his Western swan song to be in a spaghetti – there’s always that, but that’s not saying much for a true giant in the genre.
I haven’t seen WANDA NEVADA but i’m glad to learn that Hank didn’t end his Western career with a spag.
Well I like it. I know, know. I find it goofy, silly, entertaining. I like the recreation of old New Orleans at the end and Fonda’s speech too. I like Leone, I know. Still the world is big enough for him and the legends we all know and love (Ford, Mann, Boetticher, Eastwood, Sturges, Hawks, etc).
Fair enough.